To many viewers, multimedia programs contain only a relatively small-amount of interesting content combined with a larger amount of uninteresting and unwanted content, including unwanted programming and/or commercial messages. By way of example, professional sporting events such as football and baseball games have only a few minutes of real action interleaved into much more lengthy segments of commentary and commercials. Indeed, most video and audio programming is riddled with advertising that increases the overall time required to view content of interest to the viewer. There is thus a need in the art for improvements that would provide viewers with improved control over viewed content and the ability to experience interesting content in a minimum amount of time.
Videocassette recorders (VCR's) and more recently, digital video recorders (DVR's) have enabled some degree of viewer control over content viewing. But these known devices do not offer a degree of control that permits seamless and tailored content viewing and an associated minimization of viewing time. VCR's are in widespread use to record programming material onto a tape and, at a later time enable sequential fast-forward through commercials or unwanted programming. While this practice reduces the time required to view subject matter of interest, it still requires the viewer to monitor the content at high speed to detect segments of interest.
DVR's, such as Tivo® and ReplayTV® enable a viewer to store content in digital form, typically on a hard disk, for playback. These devices can be programmed to record selected programs according to criteria selected by the viewer. The programs are recorded in their entirety, and may be later played back with some control over the content. For example, some DVR's offer features that enable the user to skip program segments of a predetermined length of time to permit quick advancement past commercials. Others perform some sensing of commercials “on the fly” and advance past advertisements by detecting relative audio levels between commercials and non-commercial content. In addition, some digital media players, such as DVD players, offer bookmarking or chapter references that permit some degree of viewer navigation and control of content on playback. However, these known devices offer only limited viewer control of content playback, usually according to predetermined criteria that is not particular or customizable according to the viewer's content interests or preferences and they fall short of permitting the viewer to select and experience only interesting content in a minimal amount of time. There is thus a need in the art for a system and method that addresses these shortcomings. In addition, today's television advertising models are still premised on the assumption that content will be viewed in total and that viewers lack the control over content that would permit them to avoid advertising that is of no interest. However, as users gain increasing control over viewed content, they have increasingly used this control to avoid advertising. What is needed are systems and methods of providing advertising content to viewers in a manner that offers more potential for advertising to be viewed by users that have enhanced control over viewed content.